EPT9 Deauville Day 1B: It's France versus the rest of the world

As mentioned earlier, the official numbers for EPT9 Deauville are in, and this is a 782-player affair. A decent handful of them--307 to be precise--played Day 1A and the remaining 475 showed up today.

Player numbers are officially slightly down on last year, when Vadzim Kursevich triumphed from a field of 889. But poker really couldn't be more healthy in France, and the same stats show us why. Of those 782 players, a remarkable 385 are French. That means the home nation represents 49 per cent of the total field which is a significant chunk, even by the parochial standards of the EPT.

The reason I have all this data all of a sudden is owing, as ever, to the tireless efforts of Mad Harper, the EPT Media Co-ordinator. She has been analysing all the player entry forms and putting together her regular pie-chart of nationalities. She does that quicker these days than the tournament staff can calculate the prize structure, so she well deserves a lie down.

Here is that pie-chart, with the raw stats below. For me, one of the most surprising nuggets of information contained there is the news that only one player from Denmark has made it to Deauville. That must mark the lowest number of Danes in the field of any EPT event since the tour began. What has happened to Danish poker?